The Best At It

Rahul Kapoor wants to be the best at it. The best at what? Honestly, anything. Football, acting … anything except Maths. He doesn’t want to fit into the stereotype of the nerdy American Indian. In fact, he wants as little to do with his Indianness as possible.
For instance, he doesn’t want to be part of the International Bazaar that his mother’s friends, the Auntie Squad, are organising.
And he’d like to be a little less brown.
Oh, and he finds his father’s Bollywood music more than a little embarrassing.

The Best At It was a gentle, lovely book. Yes, I did cringe more than once, but isn’t adolescence full of cringeworthy moments? Unerringly, The Best At It goes to the heart of each moment, embarrassing or sad, wildly happy or confusing. And that – the authenticity of tone on each page – is what drew me to the story. Who are we? Who do we want to be? How can we fit in? Even when we fit in, how can we impress our peers? Rahul Kapoor grapples with all this, even as he wonders how his racial and sexual identity will affect him and his relationships with friends and family.

The only parts of The Best At It that I didn’t enjoy at all were the little explanatory notes about being Indian, like making everyone your auntie or uncle, or translations of Hindi snippets. Were these necessary? I wonder. They made me frown, throwing me out of the story. Wouldn’t those who know nothing about India figure these things out for themselves? Or, like I’ve always done with cultural references I don’t understand, wouldn’t they simply move on?

Despite the tiny quibbles I had with the book, I finished it feeling deeply satisfied. Each character in the story felt real to me – from the protagonist Rahul to his best friend Chelsea, the perfect Justin to the bully Brent, Rahul’s grandfather Bhai to his parents who are more than willing to fight his battles. Funny and sweet, The Best At It touched me with its charm and sensitivity.